Download Site Founder Receives 4.5 Year Jail Sentence, Forfeits $4.7m

The founder of one of Europe’s former leading illicit movie streaming portals has been convicted. The man, known as Dirk B, received a reduced sentence after giving a full confession and apology for this activities on Kino.to, the site hit by a massive international police operation in 2011. Despite his overtures, Dirk B received a 4.5 year jail sentence and was ordered to forfeit $4.7m of the claimed $8m he earned from the site.

In June 2011, the biggest ever operation aimed at tackling online movie piracy took place in Europe. The target for police in Germany, Spain, France, and the Netherlands was movie-streaming portal Kino.to and its affiliates.

More than a dozen people were arrested and since then various individuals have been brought to justice. The latest to face punishment is the site’s founder.

Known only as Dirk B due to German privacy laws which protect the identities of suspected criminals, the 39-year-old faced an extended stay in prison after prosecutors requested an 11 year sentence.

Download Site Founder Receives 4.5 Year Jail Sentence, Forfeits $4.7m

• enigmax
• June 15, 2012
• 74
• Kino.to
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The founder of one of Europe’s former leading illicit movie streaming portals has been convicted. The man, known as Dirk B, received a reduced sentence after giving a full confession and apology for this activities on Kino.to, the site hit by a massive international police operation in 2011. Despite his overtures, Dirk B received a 4.5 year jail sentence and was ordered to forfeit $4.7m of the claimed $8m he earned from the site.

In June 2011, the biggest ever operation aimed at tackling online movie piracy took place in Europe. The target for police in Germany, Spain, France, and the Netherlands was movie-streaming portal Kino.to and its affiliates.

More than a dozen people were arrested and since then various individuals have been brought to justice. The latest to face punishment is the site’s founder.

Known only as Dirk B due to German privacy laws which protect the identities of suspected criminals, the 39-year-old faced an extended stay in prison after prosecutors requested an 11 year sentence.

However, after cooperating with authorities and confessing to a sample 1.1 million instances of copyright infringement and being responsible for a file-hosting service linked to Kino.to, the court decided to hand down a much reduced sentence.

According to Deutsche Welle, District Court judge Karsten Nickel described the case as the “most serious” copyright breach ever to come before the courts in Germany. He went on to hand Dirk B a 4.5 year jail sentence.

The prosecution said that the operators of Kino.to generated huge profits through advertising and so-called “subscription trap” schemes. As part of his plea bargain, Dirk B agreed to hand over around $4.7m of the claimed $8m he made in revenue through his Spanish advertising company.

Dirk B is the 6th person to be sentenced in the Kino.to case.

In December 2011, 33-year-old web designer Marcus V. was handed 2.5 years in prison for his role in the site. A week later 27-year-old Martin S. – reportedly the main admin of Kino.to and brother-in-law of Dirk B. – received a 3 year sentence.

Later in December an unemployed IT assistant received 1 year 9 months probation after he confessed to uploading pirate movies and TV shows to Kino.to servers between June 2009 to July 2011.

A week later a 47-year-old server operator was sentenced to 3 years and 5 months in prison after being found guilty of storing more than 10,700 movies for paid subscription access.

In April this year, Kino.to’s 29-year-old lead programmer was sentenced to three years and ten months in prison.

Napster Founders Created New Service

Two of the US developers of the file-sharing platform known as Napster, Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning, have recently reunited and started a new service for friends to video chat online.

Founders of Napster now created a new service called AirTime at the event featuring such Hollywood stars as Jim Carrey, talk show host Jimmy Fallon, and TV star Joel McHale. Rapper Snoop Dogg and actress Olivia Munn also made an appearance as live video chats.

Because of the technical difficulties, video chats between the celebrities could only last 10 minutes, and the creators were trying to fix the problems during the event. Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning plan to overcome such difficulties as soon as possible, because their new service will be implemented by Facebook soon. Therefore, only Facebook users will be able to use AirTime.

Meanwhile, Sean Parker explained that AirTime isn’t going to rival established social networks, but instead act like a separate social network itself. They want to make the online space a fun place to visit, with your friends being able to video chat with each other online, while allowing them remain anonymous. The new company will ensure users’ safety, because it became one of the prime concerns of the modern Internet users. Sean Parker explained that the new service founders are trying to restore serendipity to the web, and pointed out that there’s never been an environment like AirTime’s for live online performance.

However, when asked how Napster changed everything a decade ago, its founders claimed that they had no idea of the impact this would have. All they realized was that the product was big, but they dramatically underestimated the scale.

How Long Before VPNs Become Illegal?

Across the world initiatives are appearing with an aim to increase Internet monitoring. In the U.S. file-sharers will soon be monitored and reported on behalf of the MPAA and RIAA, and in the UK there are plans to monitor and store all Internet communications. Countering this increased surveillance people are turning en masse to VPN services to ensure their privacy. This begs the question; how long before VPNs become illegal?

In the coming decade there will be an avalanche of initiatives to regulate and monitor the Internet.

The freedom, privacy and relative anonymity that people experience today will only be short-lived if the copyright lobby and intelligence agencies have their way.

In the U.S. there is CISPA, a bill that would put an end to people’s privacy on the Internet by allowing companies to spy on Internet users. Despite fierce opposition from the online community, the bill was approved by the House of Representatives in April.

Another example of increased monitoring in the US is the “six-strikes” anti-piracy agreement, in which alleged ‘pirates’ will be tracked down and punished as part of an agreement ISPs signed with the MPAA and RIAA.

In the U.K. there are similar developments. Not only are there plans to monitor and warn file-sharers, a draft of the ‘Communications Data Bill’ that was posted yesterday shows that the U.K. government wants to monitor and store the Internet activity of its citizens.

A scary prospect for many, but as always there are plenty of ways to circumvent these spying efforts.

Privacy conscious Internet users could simply switch to one of the many VPN providers and bypass all of the above. Since VPN providers in the U.S. and many other countries are not required to log any user information (some do), these users can’t be easily monitored.

But for how long?

Research has shown that people are increasingly turning to these anonymity services, partly in response to new surveillance initiatives. Millions already hide behind VPNs when they go online and this number will only increase in the coming years.

Intelligence agencies and the copyright lobby are not happy with this development, and it would come as no surprise if they began lobbying for a ban on VPN usage. After all, these pesky VPN users are obstructing the law.

“If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear,” they’ll say, adding that your car also requires a readable license plate.

While a ban on VPNs might sound rigorous, it’s by no means unthinkable. In Iran, where a quarter of all Internet subscribers use VPNs, the government has already announced a crackdown on privacy-enhancing tools that bypass local law.

Luckily for privacy advocates, however, not all is lost. The architecture of the Internet is flexible so even in the event VPNs were banned there would still be alternatives to guarantee people’s privacy. But there is little doubt that there will be a huge fight over these issues in the years to come.

So for now, enjoy your privacy for as long as it lasts.

Intelligent Cyber War Is on the Way

Last week, NATO's Cyber Defense Center held its 4rth annual conference, where it provided security experts with the unique chance to scare the bejesus out of military experts.

According to cyber experts’ reports, the rapid advances in digital war technology might result in a new generation of “intelligent cyber weapons”. Meanwhile, these new weapons can appear all but unstoppable. Enn Tyugu, the NATO IT expert, thinks that such new weapons won’t only be hard to stop, but also hard to be controlled by the users. As such, they may start living their own lives and that’s where fiction becomes reality. Nevertheless, the expert is talking not about Skynet, but about virus attacks like Stuxnet.

The experts explained that such malware is quite autonomous, and is able to operate independently in an unfriendly environment and may sometimes become almost impossible to control. That can result in cyber conflict launched by these agents themselves.

Ilmar Tamm, the head of the NATO Cyber Defense Center, emphasized that Stuxnet and Flame have indicated another form of cyber threats that is expected to bring many challenges to all security experts. In addition, the number of cyber conflicts is currently increasing and it’s important to understand how to classify events and participants.

Nevertheless, American cyber defense expert Kenneth Geers claimed during the conference that the most powerful cyber weapon today is a little bit more down to earth. In fact, it’s just good old propaganda, which can ruin the world just as super new cyber weapons.

The Pirate Bay Responded to RIAA Search Censorship

The world’s largest BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay has graciously welcomed the recommendation of the Recording Industry Association of America that search engines ban websites like TPB. The tracker claimed that instead of deterring people, it would attract more traffic to the site.

Recently RIAA’s head Cary Sherman told the Congress that they need to do more to stop Internet piracy. Sherman took to the stage at the Future of Audio hearing and recommended that all search engines, including Google, took responsibility in curbing Internet piracy by censoring services like the Pirate Bay and IsoHunt, while offering legal music services to the users.

The Pirate Bay is of course against censorship, and reacted by releasing the statement saying that the RIAA was trying to ensure that the competing search engines have to stop linking back to the TPB, which is just wonderful. The Pirate Bay also pointed out that about 10% of its traffic comes from competing search engines.

In other words, after implementation of that ban, the TPB’s traffic numbers probably will increase, because users would go directly to The Pirate Bay and use its search instead. This will provide the service a chance to grow even more massive – although it’s undoubtedly hard to compete with Google, if they aren’t able to index media search engines like the TPB, the latter will become the dominant player in the end.

Nevertheless, users in the United Kingdom might be out of luck, depending on their Internet service provider, and some already have to adhere to orders from the British courts to block direct access to The Pirate Bay. The first ISP to do so was Virgin Media, whose users now face a page saying that the ISP has received an order to prevent access to The Pirate Bay in order to protect copyright.

Another ISP, Be Broadband (an O2 subsidiary), was also reported to block the website, but The Pirate Bay proved to be still accessible. Like other major ISPs, Be admitted it will have to bow down to pressure from the court and comply with the demand to block access to TPB. The broadband provider claimed that its hands were tied and it had no other choice but to comply. Meanwhile, despite the best efforts of the entertainment industry, mirror services and proxies are still available everywhere and easy enough to find.

Facebook Advertising Proved Useless

According to the recent poll, 80% of Facebook users have never bought anything advertised on the social network. In fact, the survey states the obvious: people aren’t using Facebook to buy something or get informed, they are rather killing time. There’s also another phenomenon revealed: Facebook fatigue. Around 34% of Facebook users admitted to spending, or wasting less time on Facebook than 6 months ago.

Meanwhile, Facebook’s controversial IPO didn’t go down well with its users either, because 44% claimed it made them less favorable toward the social network, says Reuters. So, all of this doesn’t bode well for the network, because it tries to find out how to translate its huge user base into actual profits. The fact is that people aren’t spending on Facebook, and don’t care about advertisements or comments, which means that Facebook has yet to develop a revenue generating model in the mobile space.

Moreover, the growth is slowing down and it has to, like mobile phone penetration in the developed world a decade ago. There are just not enough people to target with advertising, because more and more of them are now from the 3rd world. Meanwhile, the social network refused to comment on the poll results, but pointed to previous reports saying that Facebook advertising campaigns were successful earlier.

After the IPO, the company’s business model came under even more scrutiny, though it would have been a right way to scrutinize the model before small investors pour their retirement savings in Facebook stock, hoping that they are investing in the next Google or Apple. In the meantime, the notion that Facebook would eventually cash in on what actually amounts to the biggest information mining operation worldwide seems to be wearing off.

Although targeted ads may sound like a good idea, they can also backfire, because Internet users aren’t that keen to see personalized advertisements on their page, in some cases with awkward or downright embarrassing material. Instead, it can be regarded as a tricky balancing act between delivering proper targeted advertising and bad taste. Thus far, the largest social network in the world doesn’t seem to be making this work. So, Zuckerberg has something to consider…

The Pirate Bay Responded to RIAA Search Censorship

The world’s largest BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay has graciously welcomed the recommendation of the Recording Industry Association of America that search engines ban websites like TPB. The tracker claimed that instead of deterring people, it would attract more traffic to the site.

Recently RIAA’s head Cary Sherman told the Congress that they need to do more to stop Internet piracy. Sherman took to the stage at the Future of Audio hearing and recommended that all search engines, including Google, took responsibility in curbing Internet piracy by censoring services like the Pirate Bay and IsoHunt, while offering legal music services to the users.

The Pirate Bay is of course against censorship, and reacted by releasing the statement saying that the RIAA was trying to ensure that the competing search engines have to stop linking back to the TPB, which is just wonderful. The Pirate Bay also pointed out that about 10% of its traffic comes from competing search engines.

In other words, after implementation of that ban, the TPB’s traffic numbers probably will increase, because users would go directly to The Pirate Bay and use its search instead. This will provide the service a chance to grow even more massive – although it’s undoubtedly hard to compete with Google, if they aren’t able to index media search engines like the TPB, the latter will become the dominant player in the end.

Nevertheless, users in the United Kingdom might be out of luck, depending on their Internet service provider, and some already have to adhere to orders from the British courts to block direct access to The Pirate Bay. The first ISP to do so was Virgin Media, whose users now face a page saying that the ISP has received an order to prevent access to The Pirate Bay in order to protect copyright.

Another ISP, Be Broadband (an O2 subsidiary), was also reported to block the website, but The Pirate Bay proved to be still accessible. Like other major ISPs, Be admitted it will have to bow down to pressure from the court and comply with the demand to block access to TPB. The broadband provider claimed that its hands were tied and it had no other choice but to comply. Meanwhile, despite the best efforts of the entertainment industry, mirror services and proxies are still available everywhere and easy enough to find.

Iran Enlisted Hackers and Blogger

Some cyber intelligence expert revealed that Iran is stepping up its use of the Internet propaganda, hacking and other sophisticated tools some use on the Internet. It was claimed that the authorities of the country are using a number of paramilitary outfits in the effort.

There are a few interesting facts revealed, one of them being that the efforts of the Iranian government aren’t intended to take on enemies of the regime by direct actions, but instead to promote the ideals of the Islamic revolution. Their main focus is believed to preserve the philosophic foundation of the revolution and to decrease western influences on their local culture.

The experts insisted that the Revolutionary Guard has been paying bloggers $7 per hour to promote their agenda on such online resources as Facebook and forums. That may seem a pretty sweet gig for many, because the official average monthly salary in the country was estimated at about $500. For instance, an Israeli think-tank claims the running rate is $4.3 per hour.

Three years ago, the Rand Corporation also published a report which said that the IRCG played a role in monitoring online communications in the country, trying to “mitigate the influx of corrupting foreign ideals”.

Despite the fact that local propaganda campaigns might seem crude, you shouldn’t forget the Soviet approach was both “subtle” and intelligent, while many still believe in conspiracy theories. Meanwhile, Western propagandists aren’t much better, because they would have people believe in things like Iranians’ intention to put a nuclear warhead and so on.

MegaUpload Battle Continues

MegaUpload’s founder Kim Dotcom and his attorneys keep fighting back the criminal charges brought against them by the American authorities.

Dotcom’s attorneys have recently asked the Virginia Federal Court to drop the charges against the company founder and his colleagues, because the US violated MegaUpload’s 5th amendment right to due process when the country’s authorities shut down the file-sharing service. In case the court agrees to drop the case, this decision would bring one of the largest criminal copyright cases filed by the United States to an end.

In their desperate attempts to shut down Dotcom’s multi-billion dollar business, the authorities of the United States didn’t just seize the website’s domain names and servers, but also took away Kim’s personal belongings. Then, trying to extradite Dotcom and his colleagues, the US law enforcement had asked help from foreign authorities.

Since the moment of their arrest, Kim Dotcom and his colleagues have battled American authorities in order to escape extradition, and their efforts seem to be successful, at least partly.

In addition, Dotcom’s attorney, Ira Rothken, continues insisting that the file-sharing service can’t be served outside the jurisdiction of the United States. That’s why, if the Virginia Federal Court decides to drop the case of MegaUpload, it would clearly represent a deadly blow to the American government, which would eventually be sued itself.

MegaUpload hosting service was closed this past January, and since then the case has been holding the attention of the industry observers all over the world, who are now waiting for the court decision to see what’s going to happen.

Methods to Circumvent American 6-Strikes Law

1st of July 2012 is when the largest effort of the US to fight piracy – the six-strike regime – will start. The system represents the collaboration between the largest country’s Internet service providers and the entertainment industry, represented by the MPAA and RIAA.

The list of participating ISPs includes Time Warner Cable, Comcast, AT&T, Cablevision, and Verizon. The 6-strike system mainly focuses on copyrighted content located on BitTorrent networks.

However, there’s something that raises not just morality questions, but also the legal ones. The matter is that the entertainment industry in cooperation with ISPs is planning to be the judge of all digital material without letting anyone to check on them.

In addition, they believe that the BitTorrent network is facilitating the infringement of copyrighted content, which seems to be one of the most ridiculous ideas to many. However, instead of pinning every drawback of the graduated response regime, we may offer you four convenient ways to circumvent it.

1. VPN services. When the entertainment industry is scanning open P2P networks, your IP address is both vulnerable and easy to track. You can mask your IP address by subscribing to a VPN (Virtual Private Network) – this will hide your real IP from all public view. Moreover, VPNs don’t keep logs, so there won’t be any trail to track.
2. Proxy services. They are quite similar to VPNs, but they do not re-route online traffic through a number of remote servers, which simply hide specific programs and protocols.
3. Seedbox services. In case you want to be 100% secure, check out a seedbox, which provides anonymity by downloading torrent files to some remote machine not attached to your IP address. When the download is ready, the content will be transferred to the user’s PC without BitTorrent’s involvement. Such seedboxes offer fast connection speeds.
4. Private networks. As it was said above, the entertainment industry will scan open P2P networks, including servicers like The Pirate Bay. However, aside from open networks, you can also find private trackers staying under the radar and keeping you safe.

Other alternatives include obsolete utilities like the Internet relay chat (IRC), Usenet, Freenet Project, and digital storage lockers.